Thursday, March 9, 2017

With less than two months to go before voting begins for the Conservative Party leadership, Maxime Bernier and Kevin O'Leary are the front-runners, according to an analysis of endorsement, fundraising and polling data.Bernier narrowly leads O'Leary based on a composite of four metrics (endorsements, fundraising, contributors and polls) that estimates how much support each candidate would likely have on the first ballot if the leadership vote were held today — call it the Conservative Leadership Index.You can read the rest of this article here.

11 comments:

Very interesting discussion and data. O'Leary is only among the first tier because he polls well. As discussed before this is an important metric albeit one open to much interpretation.

To me it looks like Bernier is pretty much running away with it. His support is likely to be disproportionately strong in Quebec whereas O'Leary will likely be disproportionately weak. The only place O'Leary can make up that ground is Ontario. He may do it. Presumably his lead in Ontario is larger than his national lead but, in a crowded field and a point system such a lead may not translate into a proportional number of points.

Bernier will be in most Tories' top five choices. O'Leary, because he is campaigning well may but, I don't see it happening because he has very high negatives, even among the general public never mind Conservatives, some of whom think he is little more than a carpetbagger and self-publicist. As I wrote before; "who is going to pay 15 bucks for the privilege of voting for Kevin O'Leary"?

Was happy to see Deepak Ohbrai not at the bottom of the list. At this point I think he'll get my first preference. He is a morale booster, good natured, somebody who has persevered through adversity and hardships and I am told even a bit of a bon vivant! I understood why Harper did not elevate him to cabinet, but, thought he deserved to be. The Harper Government worked very hard and were successful in courting the New Canadian vote but, they didn't give back, which was poor leadership and strategy I thought.

I suppose another way to think about it is that O'Leary polled so well that he doesn't need a dollar of donations or any endorsements to be in the top tier.

It should be clear that the only two viable candidates are O'Leary and Bernier. Also clear is that there are at least 9 candidates who have no chance at all. They should take the one opportunity they have to have some effect on the race, by dropping out and endorsing a frontrunner now. If they wait until April, after the new member signup deadline, it will have almost no effect.

It is a pretty big leap to turn Maxime Bernier's "Matrix meme" into an endorsement or even a reference to the "Red Pill Movement" or documentary of the same name.

This "news" did not make the pages of Le Devoir or The Globe and Mail or the Gazette. It is a non-story, the only way it has meaning is if one infers it is a reference to something to which it is clearly not. It is close to slanderous frankly.

Bernier is well on his way to becoming the next prime minister-that's serious trouble alright for Justin Trudeau! Liberals are getting scared and now they are throwing mud. No surprises here.

He's not in any trouble, people like you are trying to make a big deal out of nothing. They tweeted a Matrix meme and even said as such, their twitter is full of memes like tree fiddy etc. People saw an opportunity to try and get them in trouble and are running with it but it wasn't mean that way. Nice try though.

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